Over one million farmers raise their voices at COP26

Over 1.8 million farmers and workers around the globe have petitioned the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference — COP26 to keep promises of past meetings.

The biggest climate conference is taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, it started on October 31 and ends on November 12, 2021.

The farmers, under Fairtrade, an organisation that fights for better terms of trade for workers and farmers, say it’s time for action.

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The farmers through a petition called ‘Be Fair to Your Climate Promise’, have petitioned stakeholders through a signed letter- to stick to the promises and proposals made in previous conferences and to uphold high standards of environmental conservation.

Fairtrade embarked on an emotive media campaign targeted to reach governments, parliaments, farmers, the general public, world leaders, manufacturers, commercial partners, and all concerned parties in matters environment.

These are the groups that have failed to honour the promises made over the last 26 years since the UN Climate Change Conferences began. The proposals are yet to be actioned or applied in day-to-day livelihoods.

“Dear world leaders, we write on behalf of 1.8 million Fairtrade farmers and workers working in agriculture across the world. We grow the food eaten at the tables of people around the world. But our ability to do so has been badly damaged by the reckless harm done to our environment from years of broken promises concerning the climate crisis,” said the farmers.

They said the stakeholders had promised to cut emissions, which drive extreme weather, but nothing concrete had happened.

“You promised to provide climate finance, to help us keep growing food despite the changing weather. But nothing is reaching us. You promised to change business from exploiter to partner. Shareholders earn billions while millions of farmers earn less than a dollar a day,” they said.

Accordingly, the recent months have seen crops hit hard by extreme weather, including devastating floods in Uganda and Nigeria, drought in Madagascar, and invasions of locusts across the African continent.

This year, Africa saw the hottest January and June ever, which they say harms their ability to grow the food that the world needs.

“Because our livelihoods are tied to our farm produce, poverty is once again growing among us. But the impact goes deeper. The damage to our land and water is increasing competition for resources, and African farmers and workers are faced with ever-increasing social and economic tensions,” they noted.

The harm, they added, falls disproportionately onto women in farming households, who are often the lowest paid, working in the most difficult conditions. Young people, they opined do not want to remain in farming under these conditions, and no one should blame them. This portends danger to food security because there will be no one who will grow the world’s food if a new generation does not see farming as anything other than a poverty trap.

They also want to be supported financially to plant trees. Already there is tree planting to protect crops from the sun like cocoa in Ghana and tea from flooding in Kenya.

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